High speed data converters and their applications in optical communication system

The rapid growth of data center traffic, driven by cloud technology adoption, has propelled the development of a variety of spectrally efficient modulation formats, such as 4-level pulse amplitude modulation (PAM4), quadrature phase shift keying (QPSK) and quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM). High speed CMOS DSP-based transceivers provide complex equalization scheme to compensate for the channel loss as well as the nonlinearity impairments introduced by chromatic and polarization dispersion. The recent development of ultra-high speed data converters has been a key enabling technology converting data signal between analog and digital domain, which has shaped the traditional communication transceiver systems. This paper covers the advancement of CMOS data converter technology and its wide application, as well as the future development and trend.